JUST before the world lost Amy Winehouse way too soon, she got to sing with one of her all-time heroes, Tony Bennett.
She was so nervous that there were several false starts before they nailed a take of sultry jazz standard Body And Soul.
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But it was typical of Bennett’s kindly manner that he was able to put his duet partner at ease.
He said afterwards: “People think that anyone can sing jazz, but it’s a spirit that you’re born with . . . or not. Amy was born with that spirit.”
So, too, was Bennett.
Winehouse was just one of so many singers in awe of the American crooner, the last man standing of the golden jazz era.
His passing yesterday at 96, just two weeks short of his birthday, signals the end of an epic life in music.
Blessed with a velvet tenor voice, he was the New Yorker who sang I Left My Heart In San Francisco as his signature hit.
His family, including wife Susan, said: “Tony left us today but he was still singing the other day at his piano and his last song was Because Of You, his first No1 hit.
“Tony, because of you, we have your songs in our heart for ever.”
Elton John commented: “So sad to hear of Tony’s passing.
“Without doubt the classiest singer, man and performer you will ever see.
“He’s irreplaceable. I loved and adored him.”
While Billy Joel called Bennett “one of the most important interpreters of American popular song during the mid to late 20th century”.
In his tribute, Star Trek star George Takei said: “He may have left his heart in San Francisco but he won all of our hearts, from Sinatra to Lady Gaga.
“Be at peace, and sing to us now from the stars, Tony.”
The winner of 20 Grammys, Bennett’s early triumphs include Rags To Riches, which plays at the opening of 1990 gangster movie Goodfellas.
Later on he gave us masterful interpretations of the Motown classic For Once In My Life and, despite baulking at the idea, George Harrison’s Beatles ballad Something.
Consider the fact that his first album, featuring a tear-stained Boulevard Of Broken Dreams and Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart, appeared in 1952, three years before Elvis Presley recorded his first single.
Then, despite the onset of Alzheimer’s, that his 61st and final studio album, Love For Sale, the second of his collaborations with Lady Gaga, came out two years ago.
Though he was diagnosed in 2016, the slow onset of the disease allowed him to carry on recording and singing live for five more years.
His final shows, recorded for TV on August 3 and 5, 2021, were billed One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett And Lady Gaga.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he gave a softly sung but still commanding rendition of Fly Me To The Moon.
“I’ve never worked a day in my life,” he said relatively recently, in a nod to Confucius.
“Because I love what I do.”
If his early career was in the shadow of Rat Pack singers such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., he carved out a special place all of his own in the history of American popular music.
Bennett could lend his rich, mellow, expressive tones to almost any type of song.
He literally could sing the phone book. Sinatra himself had only the utmost respect.
“Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business,” he once said.
“He excites me when I watch him. He moves me.
“He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in the Queens neighbourhood of New York to Italian American parents.
With his father John in poor health, life was tough for young Tony but, before he died, dad taught his son to love art and literature.
The boy loved to draw and was known for his excellent caricatures.
He also heard the music of Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Al Jolson and Louis Armstrong.
By the age of ten he was developing his passion for singing and was seen in public performing at the opening of a complex of bridges connecting Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.
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The New York mayor even patted him on the head.
And you can just imagine the joy he felt when he started making money as a singing waiter in the Italian restaurants near his home.
Benedetto enrolled at NY’s School of Industrial Art to study painting and music but dropped out at 16.
And though he took some odd jobs to support his family, he set his heart on a career as a professional singer.
But first he had to get through World War Two, which saw him drafted into the US Army as an infantry rifleman.
In 1945, as the Allies pushed for victory, Benedetto joined the front line in France, which he later described as “a front row seat in hell”.
He was lucky to return home alive, having engaged in house-to-house combat as his division pressed on into Germany and witnessed many comrades being killed.
His torrid experience, which also included liberating a Nazi concen- tration camp, turned him into a lifelong pacifist.
“I saw things no human being should ever have to see,” he wrote in his autobiography.
After the war, Benedetto stayed in Germany, where he entertained the still-segregated American forces but, astonishingly, got demoted for dining with a black friend.
On returning to the States his big breakthrough arrived thanks to comedian and superstar of the day Bob Hope.
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Hope recognised this burgeoning talent, took him under his wing on tour and changed his name to Tony Bennett.
Then, in 1949, the young singer cut a demo of Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, set in Paris with its opening line, “I walk along the street of sorrow”.
It landed him a contract with Columbia Records, where, despite a hiatus, he stayed for most of his recording career.
His polished final version, backed by the Marty Manning Orchestra, became his debut major label single and the defining song of his early career.
Many years later he would record a new duet version with Sting, a singer from a different era who also embraced jazz. Success came quickly for Bennett in the early Fifties.
His first US No1 on the pop charts, Because Of You, was released in 1951 and stayed at the top for ten weeks.
His first chart-topper in the UK was Stranger In Paradise, a show tune from the musical Kismet.
As his vocal skills grew, Bennett had to endure two huge explosions in popular music — rock ’n’ roll in the hands of Elvis, Little Richard,
Buddy Holly and the rest, and then, in the Sixties, the British Invasion led by The Beatles.
He also stayed true to his beliefs and was a staunch supporter of America’s Civil Rights Movement in the company of other singers such as Nina Simone and Joan Baez.
In 1965 he went on the three Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama, campaigning for African-Americans’ right to vote.
He performed at the Stars For Freedom rally the night before Martin Luther King’s “How Long, Not Long” speech.
Bennett’s creative nadir came when he was asked to record pop and rock hits of the day, a prospect which, legend has it, made him feel physically sick.
By the end of the Seventies, Bennett was in a bad way . . . no recording contract, dependent on drugs, with the taxmen trying to seize his Los Angeles mansion.
It was his sons, Danny and Dae, who helped him turn his life around, getting him new, younger audiences through TV appearances including on The Muppets and The Simpsons.
His album for the video generation, MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett, went platinum, with the experienced, wiser star sticking to the principle, “If you are creative, you get busier as you get older”.
It kick-started a golden late period which found Bennett singing with any number of superstars on various Duets albums.
The list of those wanting to match their voices to the master crooner’s includes Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Bono, Elvis Costello, k.d.lang, Willie Nelson, Barbra Streisand and countless more.
But it’s Amy Winehouse who deserves another special mention.
When their duet, released posthumously on what would have been her 28th birthday — September 14, 2011 — reached No87 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America, Bennett, at 85, became the oldest living artist to chart.
It landed him and Amy a Grammy, but such was the style of the man that he allowed her parents to take the limelight.
“Tony’s collaboration meant so much to her and Body And Soul was her favourite song,” said her dad, in the acceptance speech.
RIP Tony Bennett, a class act since his singing waiter days in the Italian restaurants of Queens.
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